I went to a friend's Taiko drum concert few days ago (Fushu Daiko), and was lucky enough to sit at the front row right at the center. So I took many photos, but one that intrigues me is the one below.
Couple of questions:
1. I tried to time the photo when the performer bent backwards, to capture still motion, and was lucky enough when the performers in the back all shouted something at that same moment. But - does this actually work - with in-focus person without a face? For whatever reason this is my favorite photo of the entire concert, but I'm not entirely comfortable with it (besides missing face, the background people are lit up more than the one in the foreground).
2. This photo, and all others, have a heavy color cast (probably accentuated by ISO5000), however the stage was also lit up with colored lighting. I want to tone it down without loosing stage lighting effect, so the eye-dropper in PS or Lightroom won't really work since it will (and does) remove all color casts including the ones I'd rather keep. I made a few random pecking attempts with the dropper and found one spot where the cast was toned down a bit, but this was purely random. Is there another option?
First photo is original (adjustments in LR: +0.5 exposure, +37 highlight recovery, +2 black level; Noise Ninja luminance NR, faded to 80%)
Second photo is same adjustments, but with the slight color correction.
Thanks. I wonder if focusing on the background figures (or at least one of them - probably one to the left) while letting the performer in the front go out of focus would have worked better (I couldn't get them all in focus, not enough light, and was sitting too close to the stage - about 6 feet from the main performer).
Steady Hand wrote:
Hi,
Photos don't always have to show a facial expression to be "expressive."
However, in this case you have several faces and none is clearly seen (several out of focus) and one at an extreme angle.
I think more DOF (so more face in focus) or different timing showing the foreground figure would make a nicer/stronger photo.
secondclaw wrote:
Thanks. I wonder if focusing on the background figures (or at least one of them - probably one to the left) while letting the performer in the front go out of focus would have worked better (I couldn't get them all in focus, not enough light, and was sitting too close to the stage - about 6 feet from the main performer).
getting one performer's face either background or foreground would be better
You can see a bit of his face and you don't really need to have a face in the photo just to show the emotions. His body language works just fine. I think the picture is good enough
